Squatters left untouched by govt welfare programs

Bambang Nurbianto, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Imagine a squalid three-by-four-meter house under a large water pipe on the Western Flood Canal in Tanah Abang, Central Jakarta. Its walls consist of used plywood and rough concrete that supports the pipe. It has no kitchen or toilet.

Here is where Sukanta, 43, and his family have lived for more than 30 years, almost without any improvement to their living conditions.

He was born and grew up in Jakarta but was never registered as a citizen of the city.

Sukanta works as a trader of charcoal made from coconut shells, which he makes after collecting the shells from coconut traders in Tanah Abang market.

"I can earn only Rp 10,000 per day on average. If I'm lucky I can earn more, but sometimes I earn nothing," he told The Jakarta Post on Thursday.

Sukanta is an example of more than 100,000 neglected poor people in the city. As he and his family had not been registered at the Petamburan subdistrict office in Tanah Abang, Central Jakarta, he was not entitled to be included in the government's program of poverty eradication.

City programs aimed at eradicating poverty have always been directed at residents with official status, who have identity cards.

He said that he had never received any benefits from the government to improve his welfare.

"What I receive from the government is not assistance, but notice to quit by public order officials. They simply ask us to leave without providing us with any alternative location to live," he told the Post.

He noted that nobody from the government social affairs agency had visited the place to give advice or console him since he had lived there in the late 1950s.

A person like Sukanta is unlikely to receive an identity card as he is poor and lives illegally as a squatter on the West Flood Canal.

However, he could obtain an identity card by bribing an official at the subdistrict office, as some others in the area have done. But, of course, he could not afford the Rp 100,000 "cost" of the card.

Such a sum of money would be more useful for feeding the three members of his family or for buying books, school uniform or other necessities for his only daughter, who is a fourth-grader at an elementary school in the area.

There are hundreds of people living in illegal huts along the banks of the West Flood Canal. A similar sight can be observed at many locations, mostly along the many rivers of the city.

Sukanta said most of his neighbors were newcomers to Jakarta. There were also many people like him, born or at least raised in the capital, but very often evicted from their dwelling place.

And due to their status as squatters, they will probably never benefit from government programs designed to improve their welfare.